Friday, August 31, 2012

What does this tell us about Judith Butler? That either she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, or she’s in way over her head, and would not be able to articulate a morally coherent critique of the Left’s embrace of H&H even if she wanted to. One would think, coming from the background of the academic “theories” school (Queer, Post-colonial, pomo), in which otherness is celebrated, that it would not be hard to generate such a moral critique. And, again one would think, such a moral critique would fit elegantly into a framework in which one ardently hopes for and works towards “a truly democratic polity on those lands [based on] the principles of self-determination and co-habitation for both peoples, indeed, for all peoples.”
And in so doing, Butler might actually spare the Left the embarrassment of ludicrous movements like “Queers for Palestine,” where Western gays embrace the very cause that, were it to prevail, would kill them all. To paraphrase Lenin on capitalists (and not to essentialize as he did), “[some of] today’s leftists will embrace the ideology with which we will hang them.” (And they’ll do it not for profit, but for free, just to prove their sincerity.)More...

"We have a really dynamic growing Salafi scene," German journalist Franz Feyder said. "Some of the security officers tell us that we have about 5,000 Salafis in Germany."

Feyder follows Germany's Salafi scene closely.

"The Salafi movement in Germany is creating an environment for violence and radicalization," he told CBN News. "Not every Salafist is a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Salafist."

That includes the gunman who murdered two U.S. soldiers and injured two more in an attack in Frankfurt last year, not to mention dozens of other German Muslims that have been arrested on terrorism charges since 9/11.

Still more have left Germany to wage jihad abroad.

"We can see is that a lot of jihadis with Salafist backgrounds are going to Afghanistan and to training camps, to Pakistan into training camps," Feyder said.

"And what we can see as well is that a lot of jihadis are passing through the Horn of Africa," he continued. "And they're going to fight in Somalia, going to fight in Yemen, going to fight in Kenya."

The brutal daylight beating of a rabbi in front of his six-year-old daughter sparked furious condemnation in Germany Thursday, with some Jewish groups saying they feared a rise in anti-Semitic behaviour.

The attack on the 53-year-old by four youths, thought to be Arabs, left him hospitalised and the Jewish community outraged, already up in arms over a court ruling in western Germany that outlaws religious circumcision.
One youth smashed the rabbi in the face several times after asking him if he was Jewish, apparently because he was wearing a traditional head covering, police said.
The assailants fled, but not before aiming death threats at the young girl, according to authorities, who have launched an investigation into the Tuesday attack.
Berlin rabbi Andreas Nachama told AFP that Germany had seen over the past few years "a rising hostility towards Jews due to the conflict in the Middle East."
"Verbal attacks against Jews have increased," said Gideon Joffe, head of the Jewish Community of Berlin, in an interview with local daily Tagesspiegel.
Meanwhile, the rector of the Abraham Geiger College in Berlin, an academic seminary for rabbis, warned his students against wearing the yarmulke, or traditional Jewish head covering.
"If you are no longer seen as a Jewish person, you are safer," Walter Homolka told Friday's edition of the Berliner Morgenpost daily.
Another Berlin-based rabbi, Walter Rothschild, told German radio: "I have been spat on in broad daylight in (the central Berlin square of) Wittenbergplatz and had slogans linked to the Middle East shouted at me."
The attack came amid a fierce row over a ruling by a court in Cologne, western Germany, that circumcision of young boys for religious reasons was tantamount to grievous bodily harm and therefore illegal.
The ruling has prompted fears that religious freedom is being restricted in Germany and has brought Jews and Muslims together in condemning the judgement.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly said the ruling risks making Germany a "laughing stock" and diplomats admit privately it is "disastrous" for the country's image abroad, given its Nazi past.
Other religious leaders also condemned the attack, with Catholic group Pax Christi saying it was an "attack on Jewish life in Germany."
However, the spokesman for the Jewish forum for democracy and against anti-Semitism, Levi Salomon, sought to downplay the problem, saying: "We are shocked (by the attack) but we do not feel unsafe" in Germany.
Nevertheless, he said the atmosphere in Germany had become more difficult given the circumcision row, as well as a public spat following the publication of a poem by German literary figure Gunter Grass lambasting Israel.
The Jewish community in Germany has undergone a renaissance since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 with a flood of immigrants from the former Soviet bloc.
Often victims of anti-Semitism in their home countries, they were automatically awarded German citizenship.
Since 1989, some 220,000 Jews arrived from the former Soviet Union in Germany, which had only 30,000 Jews before 1989. But before Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, there were 600,000 Jews in Germany.More...

In September philosopher Prof. Judith Butler is slated to receive the prestigious Adorno prize awarded by the City of Frankfurt, Germany every three years, for excellence in philosophy, music, film, and theater.
The decision has attracted intense criticism from Israel’s top diplomat in Germany, and Jewish groups from across the political spectrum, as Butler has expressed positions relating to Israel which are morally perverse at best and could feasibly be interpreted as bigoted.
The comments deemed most offensive, were made at a 2006 teach-in at UC Berkeley. Addressing a question about the relationship between ‘The Left’ and terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, she responded, “I think, yes, understanding Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive that are on the left; that are part of a global left is extremely important.”
Following the recent criticism voiced, Butler penned a column defending her statements. After a long introduction explaining her personal understanding of Judaism, she writes; “My remarks on Hamas and Hezbollah have been taken out of context and badly distort my established and continuing views.”
She continues, “I was asked by a member of an academic audience a few years ago whether I thought Hamas and Hezbollah belonged to “the global left” and I replied with two points. My first point was merely descriptive: those political organizations define themselves as anti-imperialist, and anti-imperialism is one characteristic of the global left, so on that basis one could describe them as part of the global left.”
It is clear to the observer upon reading her precise statement and watching the video of it, as pointed out by others, that in fact her point was by no means descriptive but strongly prescriptive.
But what is further troublesome, and equally worthy of consideration by those responsible for highlighting her personality by presenting her with the award, are the comments she wrote in her own defense.
She admits that the claims of Hezbollah and Hamas in “define(ing) themselves as anti-imperialist” are basis enough for her to describe them as part of the global left.
In doing so, she has starkly debased her own academic integrity, as the reality of these organizations couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, in deed, action and mantra, Hamas and Hezbollah represent the embodiment of imperialist behavior. Hezbollah militarily occupies large swathes of Southern Lebanon, as a well-documented proxy of a foreign power, Iran. Hamas occupies Gaza which it seized in a military coup, and exercises totalitarian control over its inhabitants.
Both organizations are constitutionally mandated to extend their imperialist ambitions over the neighboring sovereign state of Israel.
Butler has done away with all semblance of critical thought and swallowed the words of an internationally recognized terror group’s parroting apparatchiks as fact. There is not a shred of evidence to support their ‘anti-imperialist’ claim and her support of it.
It is sad that her positions are by no means unique in academic circles, but the prominence of the award provides an opportunity for the moral community to highlight and protest the spreading of her particular brand of what one might simply refer to as ‘Inverse Liberalism.’
More...

Thursday, August 30, 2012

There’s one thing that the Thousand Year Reich and the Thousand Year Multicultural EU have in common. Neither of them are workable. Both end with attacks on Jews.

A 53-year-old Jewish man and his six-year-old daughter have become victims of an anti-Semitic attack in downtown Berlin which was reportedly committed by four youth of Arab origin. The man had to be brought to hospital with wounds at his head. Reportedly, one of the youth asked the man, who wore a kippah: “Are you a Jew?” He then hit him on the head several times and insulted his religion and his mother. He also threatened to kill the six-year-old girl.

But proving that Jewish leaders are equally clueless in Berlin as they are in New York or Los Angeles, the head of the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany had these words of wisdom to offer.

And the majority of immigrants to Germany come from Turkey. These are troubling numbers that remind us of the real cost of Muslim immigration. And it’s not just Germany that’s reeling under the assault of Turkish Muslim immigration. In the UK, Turks have become the new mafia.
The Turkish mafia is set to become the deadliest criminal organisation operating in the UK as it bids to win a brutal battle for control of Britain’s multi-million-pound heroin market.
And this is bigger than just a few street thugs. It goes higher than that.
At the heart of the mafia is a Turkish family, who cannot be named for legal reasons, who have built a drug smuggling empire described by police as one of the biggest of its kind in Britain with interests all over Europe.
And even higher than that.
A crowd of 16,000 expatriate Turks cheered Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a vast indoor auditorium in Germany on Sunday as he told them to resist assimilation into the West.
No one really asks how much of Turkey’s economic boom is built on organized crime rings operating in Europe and laundering their money back home in Turkey.
At least the Germans are still putting up a fight.More...

Judith Butler, who last week received Frankfurt’s coveted Theodor Adorno Prize, came to prominence as an anti- Israel agitator almost a decade ago. In September 2002, Harvard president Lawrence Summers charged that “at Harvard and... universities across the country,” faculty-initiated petitions were calling “for the University to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university’s endowment to be invested.”

In August 2003, Butler, then a professor at UC Berkeley and a signatory of nearly every anti-Israel petition circulating on American campuses, including the “divestment” one, published a rebuttal of Summers’s charge, called “No, it’s not anti-semitic,” in the London Review of Books. Summers had chivalrously gone out of his way to say that “Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.” A primary aim of Butler’s counter-attack was to annihilate this distinction. Using the tu quoque (you too) strategy, she called Summers’s accusations “a blow against academic freedom, in effect, if not intent.” His words have had “a chilling effect on political discourse,” she wrote.

Apparently the chill had not taken hold at Harvard itself, which would in November confer honors upon Oxford’s Tom Paulin, who was famous for urging that Jews in Judea and Samaria “should be shot dead.” Butler perfunctorily assented to Summers’s recommendation that anti-Semitism be condemned, but she seemed incapable either of recognizing it in such (to her) mild “public criticisms” as economic warfare against Israel or calls for its dismantling or assaults on Zionism itself for interfering with suicide bombers.More...

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The 53-year-old rabbi, was hospitalized after being beaten on the head by four men on a Berlin street Tuesday night in what seems to have been an anti-Semitic attack.

The rabbi, who was wearing a skullcap, was walking in the German capital’s Tempelhof-Schöneberg district with his 6-year-old daughter when a youth approached him with the question, “Are you a Jew?”, according to Berlin police.

Three other young men joined the attacker and started hitting the rabbi several times, injuring him on the head. “This was followed by insults against the man, his faith and his mother, and death threats toward his daughter,” according to the police report. All four men were probably of Arab descent, police stated.

The attackers escaped unrecognized, but police said Wednesday that they assume the attack was motivated by anti-Semitism and that they are investigating the case.

According to German-Jewish weekly Juedische Allgemeine, the victim was a rabbi living in Berlin.

Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit condemned the incident. “Berlin is an open city in which intolerance, xenophobia and anti-Semitism are not tolerated,” he told Juedische Allgemeine. Jewish groups in Germany and abroad condemned the attack.

“This despicable attack on Jews in the middle of our capital is outrageous and shocking,” said the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, “It is not just an evil attack on Jewry in Germany but an attack against all of us, and against our common values of tolerance and liberalism. It must not be downplayed under any circumstances. We Jews won’t be intimidated by such disgusting attacks. We will continue to build our Jewish future in this country openly, passionately and with self-confidence.”

European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor said that after the murder of four Jews in Toulouse, France, in March, he had expected that either of two things would occur: “On the one hand it could have sent shock waves across Europe that there is a massive problem and it has to be dealt with, leading to a lessoning of these types of attacks. The other option was that the reaction would be meager and it would send a message to extremists that life continues as normal.”

“Unfortunately,” Kantor continued, “the second option seems to have prevailed. Life goes on in Europe after such events as the Toulouse murders, but for the Jewish community life does not return to normal. The murders created a gaping wound in our communal psyche which is widened with every additional attack and the lack of a clear, concerted and institutional response means that it will not heal.”

A 53-year-old Jewish man and his six-year-old daughter have become victims of an anti-Semitic attack in downtown Berlin which was reportedly committed by four youth of Arab origin. The man had to be brought to hospital with wounds at his head. Reportedly, one of the youth asked the man, who wore a kippah: "Are you a Jew?" He then hit him on the head several times and insulted his religion and his mother. He also threatened to kill the six-year-old girl. According to the Jewish weekly 'Jüdische Allgemeine', the victim is a Berlin rabbi.
A special unit of Berlin police has begun investigations and said the incident would be treated as hate crime. Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit condemned the attack. He said: "Berlin is an international city in which intolerance, xenophobia and anti-Semitsm are not being tolerated. Police will undertake all efforts to find and arrest the perpetrators."
The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, said in a reaction: "This despicable attack on Jews in the middle of our capital is outrageous and shocking. It is not just an evil attack on Jewry in Germany but an attack against all of us, and against our common values of tolerance and liberalism. It must not be downplayed. However, we Jews won't be intimidated by such callous attacks. We will continue vigorously to build our Jewish future in this country." Graumann expressed confidence that Berlin police would soon catch the perpetrators.More...

The city of Frankfurt is set to award its prestigious Theodor Adorno prize to Professor Judith Butler, an avid proponent and supporter of boycotting Israeli products and cultural offerings.
The Adorno award, which is given for excellence in philosophy, music, film, and theater, is handed out every 3 years, and is named for a German-Jewish man who fled Nazi Germany but returned to the country after World War II to become a professor at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.
The Jerusalem Post asked Butler about statements she once made, claiming that Hamas and Hezbollah are “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left.” In an e-mail, Butler responded by saying her comments were “taken out of context.”
“My remarks on Hamas and Hezbollah have been taken out of context and misrepresent my established and continuing views,” Butler said in an email message. “I was asked by a member of an academic audience whether I thought Hamas and Hezbollah belonged to the ‘global Left,’ and I replied with two points. My first point was that those political organizations define themselves as anti-imperialist, and anti-imperialism is one characteristic of the global Left. My second point was the following: As with any group on the Left, one has to decide whether one is for that group or against it.”
Taken from a video of the said event, posted below, her precise remarks were as follows: “I think, yes, understanding Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive that are on the left; that are part of a global Left is extremely important….Again, a critical and important engagement, I mean I certainly think it should be entered into the conversation of the Left.”
Butler said that she has “never taken a stand on either organization” in her e-mail to The Post.
Dr. Charles Small, the director of The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy and the Koret Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, told The Post that the logic being used by Butler in her campaign against Israel, is the same logic that was used to force Theodor Adorno out of Germany.
“Adorno — a true scholar and master of the study of totalitarianism and anti- Semitism — was also made into a refugee by this insidious ‘logic’ which will be on display when Butler is recognized,” Small said.
“…her stated opinion in the video is nothing short of amazing,” wrote Anonymous pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon, “A celebrated academic who is unabashedly left-wing goes out of her way to describe Islamist groups – groups that are anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-human rights and really totally opposed to everything that progressives say they hold dear – as part of the fabric of the Left, her Left, the political philosophy that she is proudly part of.”
To watch Judith Butler speak and answer questions at UC Berkeley, click below. Her reference to Hamas, Hezbollah appears at approximately 16:20.More...

"Missing" - the word is written in large font above a portrait of a young man with dark hair. Beneath the headline it reads: "This is our son Ahmad. We miss him, because we don't recognize him anymore. He is withdrawing more and more, becoming more radical every day. We are afraid of losing him altogether - to religious fanatics and terrorist groups." Then there is the appeal to call the "Radicalization Advice Center."
This advice center was founded at the start of 2012 and is part of the initiative "Security Partnership - working together with Muslims for security," started by German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich "to counter the Islamist radicalization of young people." His ministry also started the ad campaign to promote the center's work.
That campaign includes posters, postcards and these fake missing person notices - with four different models - three young men, and one young woman wearing a headscarf.
The ministry's optimistic statement said, "The emotional representation makes clear the basis of the Security Partnership: countering radicalization and supporting those affected." The authority intends to hang the posters - in German, Arabic and Turkish - mainly in the immigrant districts of Berlin, Hamburg and Bonn.
dw.de

It’s a well known fact that violent crimes spike in the Muslim world around Ramadan. But Ramadan atrocities aren’t limited to the Muslim world. In Berlin, a mother who wanted to give her small children some food during Ramadan had her fingers broken by her devout Muslim husband. That may seem harsh to us, but the Religion of Peace website has tabulated 91 dead in terrorist attacks this Ramadan.
Finger-breaking isn’t the traditional punishment for premeditated Ramadan eating. That’s one month in prison in the Palestinian Authority, under a criminal code paid for by Uncle Sam. In Morocco, it’s three months. In Borneo, it’s six months. In Pakistan, the police beat you with their belts. In France, it’s a beating. In Berlin, it’s two broken fingers.
More...

The State Archive on Wednesday released 45 documents pertaining to the 1972 Munich Massacre of 11 Israeli Olympians, including one in which then-Mossad head Zvi Zamir complained that the German police "didn't make even a minimal effort to save human lives."
The documents were released to mark 40 years to the massacre, which took place on the night between September 5-6, 1972.More...

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Israel’s Ambassador to Germany Yakov Hadas-Handelsman criticized on Monday the decision of the city of Frankfurt to award the Adorno prize to US professor Judith Butler.
Hadas-Handelsman pointed to the fact that Butler previously described Hezbollah and Hamas as "progressive organizations," which he said showed ignorance towards their "participation in terror against civilians and the attitude of these organizations to religious pluralism and equal rights between men and women and between people of different sexual orientations.”
He stressed that by awarding the US professor, "who has caused damage to the one and only Jewish state," Butler’s statements will be legitimized and that "this will play into the hands of [Israel's] opponents.”
The ongoing row over awarding Butler, a supporter of a cultural and academic boycott of Israel, with the Adorno Prize in September, has seen Jewish groups call on Frankfurt to rescind the prize.
B'nai Brith International issued a statement on Monday that “Butler's anti-Israel actions include endorsing the United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), a boycott that was actively promoted by the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.”
B'nai B'rith continued, “it is wrong to give the Adorno Prize, named in honor of a Jewish intellectual, to anyone who shares these goals. It is our hope that the city of Frankfurt, a sister-city of Tel Aviv, will reconsider presenting Butler with the Adorno Prize given her lamentable anti-Israel track record.”
More...

Long-held suspicions of German collaboration with the PLO following the 1972 Munich massacre were confirmed on Sunday by news magazine Der Spiegel.
Researchers and survivors of the murdered athletes have claimed for years that West Germany secretly agreed to suspend its investigation of the massacre and allow the conspirators to escape justice.
The new report reveals that Germany´s betrayal of Israel and its own laws went even further than that.
In the months after the atrocity, the German government established contacts with the PLO and offered to not only end its investigation but upgrade the PLO´s diplomatic status. In effect, it agreed to recognize the terrorist group as a legitimate political organization.
In exchange, the PLO agreed to forgo further terrorist attacks on German soil.
YNet quotes Ilana Romano, widow of one of the victims, as saying "It´s sad that what we´ve been saying for years has only now been put forward. I thank Der Speigel of publishing this information. Better late than never."
The news represents another victory for Romano and other family members of the victims, who have spent decades campaigning for Germany to admit to its malfeasance both during and after the incident.
It is also something of a vindication for Israel. In the wake of the killings, Israel became convinced that Germany and other European countries had secretly agreed to, in effect, let the PLO get away with murder.
As a result, Israel launched Operation Wrath of God, a now-legendary Mossad operation in which the terrorists and their collaborators were hunted down and killed one by one. Only one is still alive and remains in hiding, still afraid of the long arm of the Mossad.
The operation has long been controversial, but if this latest report proves anything, it is that if Israel had not taken justice into its own hands, it never would have been done.More...

It is a response to the German government that has actually been taking appropriate action against Islamic organizations bent on the destruction of the Autonomous German Republic.
The actions the German Government have been taken is represented in this German news clip below:
More...

Monday, August 27, 2012

The city of Frankfurt's decision to award the Adorno Prize to an American professor who supports a comprehensive cultural and academic boycott of the Jewish state prompted Stephen J. Kramer, the general secretary of Germany's Jewish community, on Sunday, to demand that Frankfurt not honor Dr. Judith Butler.

Kramer told The Jerusalem Post , "It is a systemic failure. Only a curatorium that lacks the moral firmness necessary for its task could separate Butler's contribution to philosophy from her moral depravity. A person who allies herself with deadly enemies of the Jewish state, considers Hezbollah and Hamas legitimate social movements and part of the global left, and would strangle Israel with a boycott does not deserve this honor."

Dr. Judith Butler, a professor in the rhetoric and comparative literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley, who has embraced boycott, sanctions and divestment groups targeting Israel, is slated to receive the Adorno prize on September 11.

Butler flatly rejected, via email to the Post, that she endorsed Hamas and Hezbollah. When asked specifically by the Post about her position toward the two anti-Israel terror groups, she declined to comment.

Kramer, from the 105,000-member German Jewish council, said it was not only "shocking" but "sad" that Frankfurt is to honor Butler.

"She is a well-known hater of Israel," and to award her a prize named after a philosopher who was forced to emigrate because of his Jewish background cannot be viewed as a mistake, said Kramer.

Frankfurt has a history of honoring anti-Israel academics. In 2010, the city honored Alfred Grosser, a French academic who equated Israel with Nazi Germany. Israel's Embassy in Berlin slammed Grosser and the city of Frankfurt for the ceremony at the time.

Kramer said the fact that Butler "is Jewish makes her worthy of a study of the psychology of self-hatred but in no way as a laureate of the Adorno prize whose name is now stained." Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) was a German Jewish social philosopher who taught in post-Holocaust Frankfurt. He wrote about contemporary anti-Semitism, and resisted in his writings German leftist students who attacked and sought to delegitimize Israel after the Six Day War.

In her email statement to the Post, Butler wrote that "I am a scholar who gained an introduction to philosophy through Jewish thought, and I understand myself as defending and continuing a Jewish ethical tradition that includes figures such as Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt. It is simply untrue that I am anti-Semitic or self-hating. Indeed, I have been alarmed by the number of Jews who, dismayed by Israeli politics, seek to disavow their Jewishness. I am not one of those." In response to Post emails and telephone queries on Monday, the new mayor of Frankfurt, Peter Feldmann, declined to comment.

Felix Semmelroth, a representative from Frankfurt¹s culture and science agency wrote the Post on Monday that Judith Butler will be honored "as an outstanding philosopher and literature professor, especially her contributions to the relationship between identity and body and gender research, as well as moral philosophy." He also noted that she has made contributions to the study of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

The Adorno prize, which comes with a 50,000 Euro award, recognizes excellence in the disciplines of philosophy, music, theater and film, and is presented every three years.

A prominent US gay activist and writer, Jayson Littman, who has written articles about gay rights for the Post and Haaretz, told the Post, "I am saddened that a respected-academic like Judith Butler is working to turn the hatred of Israel into a queer value, and certainly hope that in honor of Theodor Adorno, she turns down the award." Butler earned global attention as a groundbreaking scholar in the field of gender studies in the 1990¹s. Though not trained as a Mideast academic, she has increasingly turned her attention to Israel.

It is not the first time that Butler has generated controversy in Germany.

After Butler termed Hamas and Hezbollah "progressive" organizations that are part of the global Left, Jan Feddersen, a gay editor at the Tageszeitung, issued a blistering commentary against Butler in a 2010 article with the subheading, "In bed with Hezbollah."More...

Integration may even be unattainable if the younger generation of Turkish-Germans increasingly continues to embrace Islam.

Nearly half of all Turks living in Germany say they hope there will be more Muslims than Christians in Germany in the future, according to a new survey of Turkish-German mores and attitudes.
The study also shows that Islam is becoming an increasingly important component of the value structure of Turks in Germany, especially among the younger generation of Turkish-Germans, who hold religious views more radical than their elders' views are.
The findings have filled many Germans with a sense of foreboding and are certain to contribute to the ongoing debate (here, here and here) about Muslim integration (or, rather, lack of it) in Germany.
The 103-page study, "German-Turkish Life and Values" (abridged version in German here), was jointly produced by the Berlin-based INFO polling institute and the Antalya, Turkey-based Liljeberg research firm, and was released to the public on August 17, as a follow-up to similar studies conducted in 2009 and 2010. It aims to determine just how satisfied the estimated 2.7 million Turks living in Germany are with their life there.
Of those Turks surveyed, 27% were born in Germany (77% of 15- to 29-year-olds were born in Germany) and 39% have lived in Germany for at least 30 years. Only 15% of Turks, however, consider Germany to be their home -- compared to 21% in 2009, and 18% in 2010.
The survey also shows that labor migration is no longer the main reason why Turks immigrate to Germany; only one in five respondents said they had gone to Germany to look for work. Rather, the most important reason Turks gave for immigrating to Germany was to marry a partner who lived there. More than half of the Turkish women interviewed said they moved to Germany for that reason.
In the area of language, the survey shows a major generational gap. Overall, only 37% of Turkish-origin men and 27% of Turkish-origin women speak better German than Turkish. Nevertheless, in the 15 to 29 age category, 75% of those surveyed speak better German than Turkish. Meanwhile, those in the 30 to 49 age category, 71% of those surveyed speak better Turkish than German.
While 91% of Turks surveyed believe that Turkish-origin children need to learn German from an early age, 90% also say that children absolutely must learn Turkish. A growing number of Turks (53%) believe that German teachers of Turkish-origin children need to understand the Turkish language to be able to help children having difficulty with the German language.
In the area of hypothetical voting patterns, the vast majority (80%) of Turks surveyed say they would vote for leftwing or far-leftwing parties if they were able to vote in Germany. 50% said they would vote for the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), 26% would vote for the leftwing Green party and 5% would vote for the far-left Die Linke. Only 13% would vote for the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU).
Almost all Turks surveyed (95%) said it is absolutely necessary for them to preserve their Turkish identity; in a sign indicating that efforts at integration have a long way to go, 62% said they would rather be around Turks than around Germans (in the 2010 survey, it was 40%). Only 39% of Turks said that Germans were trustworthy.
At the same time, 87% of those surveyed said they believe that German society should make a great effort to be considerate of the customs and traditions of Turkish immigrants.
Of those Turks surveyed, 72% believe that Islam is the only true religion (in the 2010 survey, it was 69%); 18% say Jews are inferior people and 10% say Christians are inferior.
Arguably the most sobering finding of the study is that 46% of Turks say they hope that Germany will one day have more Muslims than Christians (in the 2010 survey, it was 33%). More than half of Turks (55%) believe that Germany should build more mosques.
More than 90% of Turks surveyed consider themselves to be religious; only 9% label themselves as "not religious" (37% say they are highly religious). The survey shows high levels of religiosity (91%) among the younger generation of Turks (ages 15 to 29) living in Germany.
The study also finds that 63% of Turks aged 15 to 29 year-olds approve of the radical Islamist campaign to distribute a Koran to every household in Germany, and 36% of the young people said they would be willing to support the Salafist campaign financially with donations.
By contrast, 69% of those over the age of 50 (the older generation was heavily influenced by Kemalism) are opposed to the campaign called Project "READ!"
The authors of the study say this data reflects the increasing role of Islam among the younger generation, who consider the religion to be a "gateway to a politicization which could lead to group building"-- that is, the growing attraction to political Islam.
Overall, the new survey largely corroborates a 764-page study released by the German Interior Ministry in March 2012, which found that 48% of Muslims living in Germany "strongly leaned toward separation" and clearly rejected the culture of the German majority. .
That study, "The Daily Life of Young Muslims in Germany," also showed that among Muslims between the ages of 14 and 32 there is a "subgroup" of religious extremists who hold anti-Western views and are reportedly prepared to use violence.
Taken together, the combined research reaffirms that Germany faces significant difficulties ahead in integrating immigrant Muslim population, and that over the long-run integration may even be unattainable if the younger generation of Turkish-Germans increasingly continues to embrace Islam.More...

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Germany initiated clandestine meetings with Black September immediately after the terrorist group murdered 11 Israeli athletes and a German police officer at the 1972 Olympic Games, according to German magazine Der Spiegel.
In its Sunday issue, Spiegel reported that the talks were initiated at the behest of the West German government, located at the time in Bonn, for fear that Black September would commit additional acts of terror on German soil.
According to the report, just several months after the murders, the government proposed a secret meeting between a Black September official and then-German foreign minister Walter Scheel, the aim of the which was to create a "new basis of trust."
Germany’s government demanded a quid pro quo: the PLO would cease terror attacks on German soil in exchange for a political upgrade of the PLO. In addition, the German government would pull the plug on any criminal charges for the murders in Munich.
Paul Frank, the state secretary in the German Foreign Ministry, sent a signal to the PLO that “Munich chapter” is now “closed,” wrote Spiegel.
The magazine reported that when the French police arrested Oudeh Abu Daoud, one of the main organizers of the Munich killing spree, and inquired about extraditing him to the German authorities, the Bavarian justice secretary Alfred Seidl (Christian Social Union party) recommended that Germany take no action. The French released Abu Daoud, and Syria’s Assad regime protected him until his death at a Damascus hospital in 2010.
More...

The city of Frankfurt is slated to present the prestigious Theodor Adorno Prize, which comes with a 50,000 euro award, to a US professor who advocates a sweeping boycott of ties with Israel’s cultural and academic establishment and has defended Hezbollah and Hamas as progressive organizations.
The prize recipient, Dr. Judith Butler, a professor in the rhetoric and comparative literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley, has courted intense criticism in Germany, Israel and the US ahead of the September 11 ceremony.
Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, a Frankfurt-based Middle East expert, told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday that by presenting the Adorno Prize to Butler, the city of Frankfurt is legitimizing a “de facto boycott of its partner city Tel Aviv’s academic and cultural institutions,” because Butler supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting the Jewish state.
Von der Osten-Sacken sparked the effort to rescind the award to Butler in a widely read early June article on the website of the Berlin weekly Jungle World titled “Adorno prize for Hamas fan.”
Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) was a German Jewish social philosopher who fled the Hitler movement to the US and returned to post-Holocaust Germany to teach at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. Adorno wrote about modern anti-Semitism and opposed German leftist students who attacked and sought to delegitimize Israel after the Six Day War.
The Adorno award recognizes excellence in the disciplines of philosophy, music, theater and film, and is presented every three years.
In August, the German section of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) slammed the award to Butler because she is against Franz Kafka’s literary estate remaining at the National Library of Israel, and called for a boycott of the library located on the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
SPME, which has a global membership of 60,000 members, said Butler’s support of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and for the annual Israeli Apartheid Week means that she “can’t be an Adorno prizewinner.”
In an email to the Post, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, wrote, “The boycott campaign is part of the wider NGO-led war targeting Israel and demonizing the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and equality – the modern embodiment of anti-Semitism.”
Steinberg continued, “If Butler were a sincere human rights advocate, she would turn her concerns to the suffering of Syrians, Iranians and millions of others who are victims of real rather than invented war crimes. Instead, Butler is one of a tiny number of token Jews who are used to legitimize the ongoing war against Israel, following a dark practice used for centuries in the Diaspora.
By giving Butler and her campaign of hate a platform, officials of Frankfurt share the responsibility and the shame for this immoral behavior.”
When asked about her statement that Hamas and Hezbollah are “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left,” and the criticisms leveled against her, Butler wrote the Post by email on Thursday, “I am surprised that those who oppose my receiving the Adorno Prize seek recourse to scurrilous and unfounded charges to make their point.”
She continued, “My remarks on Hamas and Hezbollah have been taken out of context and misrepresent my established and continuing views. I was asked by a member of an academic audience whether I thought Hamas and Hezbollah belonged to the ‘global Left,’ and I replied with two points. My first point was that those political organizations define themselves as anti-imperialist, and anti-imperialism is one characteristic of the global Left. My second point was the following: As with any group on the Left, one has to decide whether one is for that group or against it.”
Butler added, “I do not endorse those practices, and cannot. So it has always seemed absurd to me that my comments were taken to mean that I support or endorse Hamas and Hezbollah! I have never taken a stand on either organization.”
Butler continued, “I do support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, but I reject some versions and accept others. I do not accept any version that discriminates against individuals on the basis of their national citizenship.”
Academic experts and journalists specializing in Israel- and Islamic-animated anti-Semitism sharply criticized Butler.
Dr. Charles Small, the director of The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy and the Koret Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, told the Post, “It boggles the mind that a so-called scholar has come to perceive Hezbollah and Hamas as part of a progressive Left. [These are] organizations dedicated openly to the killing of Jews, Israelis and Zionists; the subjugation of women; the doing away with basic notions of democracy and equality for all citizens. This supporter of reactionary, xenophobic, sexist homophobes, who are on the payroll of the Iranian regime, will actually be killing innocent Syrians as she accepts her ‘reward.’” Small noted that “hundreds of thousands” of refugees are fleeing what Butler terms a “progressive social movement” in Syria.
According to the US, Hezbollah is aiding Syria’s regime in its violent crackdown of the country’s democracy movement and has caused a massive refugee crisis.
“Adorno — a true scholar and master of the study of totalitarianism and anti- Semitism — was also made into a refugee by this insidious ‘logic’ which will be on display when Butler is recognized,” Small said.
Dr. Bruce Bawer, who has written about Butler in his book to be released in September, “The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind,” wrote the Post on Saturday, “It’s striking how scared Butler seems to be that the Adorno prize people will change their minds. This is after all a woman who turned down an award from a German gay rights organization a couple of years ago because she considered that organization ‘Islamophobic’ for having criticized Muslim gay-bashing.
“With that act, with her kind words for Hamas and Hezbollah, and her enthusiasm for the BDS movement, Butler has made it quite clear which side she stands on when the rights of free individuals are up against the politically correct cause du jour, however violent, intolerant, and tyrannical it may be.”
Israeli, British, US and French professors have sent emails to the Post in support of Butler. Prof. Neve Gordon, a supporter of BDS from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, wrote, “The well-orchestrated witchhunt initiated by the so-called Scholars for Peace in the Middle East against Judith Butler is a sly attempt – based on half-truths and lies – to silence a staunch critic of Israel’s rights-abusive policies in the Occupied Territories.”
Post emails and telephone queries to Frankfurt’s Mayor Peter Feldmann seeking a comment were not returned. The mayor’s office referred the Post to Dr.
Sonja Vandenratht from the city’s cultural agency. She said “no comment” about the decision to award Butler the Adorno Prize.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote the Post, “Theodor Adorno was a pillar of intellectual brilliance and integrity in pre-WWII Germany, who was forced out of German life because he wasn’t an Aryan and then helped rehabilitate a nation. Does anyone believe for a second that such a man would countenance the boycott of cultural and academic life in the Jewish state of Israel? Bestowing the Adorno Prize to someone who prides herself in supporting the BDS campaign, the Frankfurt committee besmirches the heroic legacy of Adorno.”
Cooper continued, “World Jewry does not expect all Germans to support all policies of Israel – home to so many of the survivors of Nazi Holocaust, but in 2012, is it too much to expect that they at least commit ‘to do no harm?’ Honoring a proponent of BDS – whose adoption could lead to Israel’s demise – should trigger revulsion among thinking Germans, not accolades.”
More...

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Germany's main Jewish body has announced its intention to institutionalize the training of mohels or ritual circumcisors.
Amid concerns among Jews and Muslims that their religious practice of circumcision may be outlawed, the Central Council of Jews in Germany is organizing meetings with Rabbi Josh Spinner of the Orthodox rabbinical seminary of Berlin and Rabbi Walter Homolka of the Reform Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam, both of which train rabbis. More...

By Carl Savich“The Chetniks” radio play was a poignant and powerful dramatization of the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia led by Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas. The play starred Mercury Theatre veteran Orson Welles, then at the height of his fame after the success of Citizen Kane (1941), and actor Vincent Price, who had starred in The Return of the Invisible Man (1940), the sequel to the 1933 James Whale classic The Invisible Man. The play was written by Violet Atkins for the Treasury Star Parade radio program in 1942. Vincent Price is the narrator, presenting the background to the events depicted in the play. Orson Welles plays Dushan, an ordinary Yugoslav who is swept up into the war after the German bombing and invasion of Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. His wife is killed in the attack. Dushan then joins the Chetnik guerrillas led by Draza Mihailovich. Violet Atkin’s radio play is effective in focusing attention on the Chetnik resistance movement. The Chetnik guerrillas are relentless and undaunted.
Orson Welles played the character of Dushan in an emotionally overwrought fashion that was suitable for radio. He delivered the lines in a faux Slavic or Serbian accent that was similar to his accent in playing the Russian character Gregory Arkadin in the 1955 film Mr. Arkadin. Welles played the role in an overstated and over-the-top style that relied on histrionics and on emotion or sentiment. His performance was effective and worked well in the context of a melodramatic radio play. More...

63 percent feel themself as a Turk even if they live in Germany.
62 percent think that Germans and Turks have same chance for getting an education.
62 percent prefer to be with other Turks.
55 percent think that more mosques should be built in Germany.
53 percent think they can get a well paid job in Turkey.
49 percent feel unwanted in Germany.
46 percent wish that there live more Muslims than Christians in Germany.
46 percent would move home to Turkey if they could not get social services in Germany.
25 percent see atheists as inferior human beings.
18 percent see Jews as inferior human beings.
10 percent see Christians as inferior human beings.More...

By Carl Savich
Nikola Tesla had a major impact on the development of the modern technological age. His influence and legacy remain pervasive and enduring. His life and inventions have been the subject of movies and of television series. He has also been the subject of plays such as “Tesla, An Evening with Genius“written by J. Michael Newlight and Frank Tabbita and ‘The Dangers of Electric Lighting” by Ben Clawson. Nikola Tesla has appeared as a historical figure and as a fictionalized character.
Two new movies have been planned to chronicle his life and impact. One is Tesla, Ruler of the Worldby Serbian screenwriter Vladimir Rajcic and Oscar-winning Croatian producer Branko Lustig, who won Oscars for Schindler’s List and Gladiator. Christian Bale is slated to play Nikola Tesla. Rade Serbedzija and Lolita Davidovich are also part of the cast. This movie was announced in February, 2011. The movie is in the pre-production stage.More...

The Mülheimer parish St. Mariae Geburt had a trying guest on Sunday: Archbishop Flavien Joseph Melki, high representative of the Syrian-Catholic church in Lebanon, celebrated a Pontifical mass in the parish church. Even the 81-year-old’s sermon given in French, translated into German bit by bit made it clear: here is a man who divides the world harshly in Christians and Muslims. Here the threatened minority, there an aggressive religion, whose young representatives are best converted in his view. More...

Hezbollah should be placed on the European Union’s terror list, Philipp Missfelder, Bundestag foreign policy spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, wrote The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. Missfelder’s call to outlaw Hezbollah is the first statement from a prominent and senior European politician since the United States and Israeli intelligence agencies asserted that the Lebanese group Hezbollah – in a joint project with Iran – murdered five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver in July. The Christian Democratic Union deputy Missfelder wrote, “It is long overdue to place Hezbollah on the EU’s list of terror organizations.”He stressed that Hezbollah “threatens the security of our alliance partner Israel and is involved in countless terror activities and receives protection from the Iranian regime.”Missfelder added that “the EU should not allow any more time to elapse” regarding the ban of Hezbollah, because “an organization that agitates against our friends in Israel cannot be accepted in Europe.” He appealed to Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, whose country holds the presidency of the 26-member EU, to take action against Hezbollah.“I call on the Cypriot council presidency, in view of the tense situation in the Middle East, to immediately address this topic,” Missfelder said. German and Israeli observers of the so-called German-Israeli special relationship consider Missfelder to be the German lawmaker most knowledgeable and supportive of Israel’s security interests. Merkel has described these interests as integral to those of the Federal Republic. Despite Merkel’s pledges that Israel’s security is “nonnegotiable” for her country, the number of Hezbollah members in Germany has increased from 900 in 2010 to 950. Hezbollah remains a legal political organization in the Federal Republic. Pro- Israel groups called on the Merkel administration last week at an anti-Iranian regime protest to ban Hezbollah. In February, Missfelder said the international community must retain the military option to stop Iran’s drive to develop nuclear arms. He told the Post at the time, “After the West has for years allowed the wool to be pulled over its eyes, Iran cannot take us seriously. The military option arises from the rising crisis situation. If Iran does not give in, a military attack will be more likely.”In a February interview, Missfelder told the Berlin daily BZ, “We should not remove any option from the table, including the military option.”More...

Thursday, August 23, 2012

September 11 is Theodor W. Adorno’s birthday and the anniversary of history’s worst Islamistic terror attack. In Frankfurt/Main, Germany on that day the Adorno Award will be awarded. For some it may be a good thing to bestow one award after the other to the greatest social critics - but this years choice can only be called preposterous.
The reason: At the will of the city of Frankfurt this award shall this year be given to the American philosopher and literary scholar Judith Butler, whose prominence primarily consists in her being a mentor of the so called gender studies. She became known recently as well for her participation in campaigns to delegitimize the Jewish state of Israel. She is a leading activist in the “Campaign of Boycottes, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel” (BDS) which was founded in 2005. Within BDS she specifically calls for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions. Another prominent anti-Israel activist is Norman Finkelstein, who just recently freely admitted in an interview that BDS campaigns are dedicated to Israel’s destruction.(1)
Judith Butler considers mortal enemies of the Jewish state - Hamas and Hezhbollah - to be progressive leftist movements: “Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global left, is extremely important.”(2) Both are terror organizations whose declared goal is Israel’s annihilation as well as the murder and expulsion of the Jews from the Middle East and the establishment of an Islamist theocracy founded on terror and murder. In a perfidious twist of reality Butler not only belittles these Anti-Semitic gang of killers with their aspiration to establish theocratic-fascist dictatorships but also to equate the only democracy in the Middle East - Israel - with Apartheid South Africa and the War on Terror after 9/11 with the actions of the Nazis against the Jews.
Adorno, who himself was a victim of the monstrous Nazi race laws, not only was forced to save his life by going into exile; he was deprived of academic teaching because he was considered Jewish. His insight that Jewish statehood may be the only means to protect Jews from persecution arose his concern for Israel’s ever present endangered existence. More than 20 years after the Shoah he wrote: “We are in extreme worry about Israel… One can only hope the Israelis will be superior enough to the Arabs militarily for the time being to uphold the situation.”(3)
This year’s Adorno laureate calls for the boycott of Jewish academics and creative artists.(4) With her declarations and her anti-Israel involvement she contributes to the legitimization of forces pursuing the extinction of the state of the Shoah survivors and the replacement of that democracy by dictatorial theocracy. To associate this with Adorno’s Critical Theory is a way of post-modern discourse which found its way into the new German Anti-Semitism.
The board of trustees - whose members include former Lord Mayor Petra Roth as well as the leaders of the Institut für Sozialforschung and the Sigmund-Freud-Institut - called Butler one of the leading thinkers of our time. Were this the case it would first of all tell a lot about “our time” and the members of the board of trustees. Frau Roth should have skipped participation in the “I Like Israel” day and Frankfurt’s town twinning with Tel Aviv.
Such a prize giving ceremony means more than a mockery of its name giver; it’s part of the right now ongoing campaign in the academic world to separate the state of Israel from its home for the survivors of the Shoah, of seperating Zionims from Judaism and to take away Israel’s legitimacy. This inversion of reality re-labels the democratic state into an occupational regime; in the same way Anti-Semitic terror gangs are turned into freedom fighters. Consequently, there’s the propaganda designation of Israelis as today’s Nazis.
Adorno’s sentence, “You only need to look into the maniacally frozen eyes of those who maybe by invoking us turn their rage against us”, (5) - dropped after the Israeli ambassador was shouted down by delegates of the studens’ movement - applies all the more for events like these. Given the decision to award Judith Butler the term “foolishness of being bright” (6) imposes itself onto the affair.
But all those still being able to think critically, independently and impartially are called upon to join this demand:
No Adorno Award for Judith Butler
as a representative of the new Anti-Semitism!More...

By Carl SavichIntroduction
Croatian Roman Catholic priest Krunoslav Draganovic orchestrated the escape of one of the most wanted and notorious Nazi war crimes suspects of World War II. Klaus Barbie was one of the most infamous Nazi commanders during the Holocaust. He went under the sobriquet the “Butcher of Lyon”, “boucher de Lyon”. He was accused of responsibility for the deaths of 44 Jewish children from the town of Izieu in France. He was also accused of the murder of Jean Moulin, one of the key French Resistance leaders during World War II.
The U.S. government knew that Barbie was wanted for war crimes in France. The Vatican was also aware of the charges against him. And yet, both the U.S. Government and the Vatican helped Barbie to escape prosecution for war crimes. How was this done?
Croatian Roman Catholic priest Krunoslav Draganovic organized the escape from prosecution of wanted Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in collaboration with the Vatican and U.S. intelligence.
The method used was the infamous Rat Lines, set up by Croatian Roman Catholic priest Krunoslav Draganovic, who had also been part of the NDH regime which murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma. Draganovic helped not only Croatian Ustasha leaders accused of genocide and war crimes to escape prosecution, but also high ranking German commanders such as Klaus Barbie.
Barbie had been the Gestapo chief in Lyons. He was implicated in the deaths of 4,000 French civilians during the German occupation. Extradited to France, he was tried and convicted of committing“crimes against humanity”.More...

On August 25, 1900, the man who famously declared the death of God died. As the body of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was laid into its grave three days later, one of the mourners declared that one day the world would consider Nietzsche’s name sacred. He spoke more from bereavement than wisdom: Nietzsche himself had written that he was afraid people might one day make him holy.

When I asked Israel Eldad to sign his translation of one of the philosopher’s books, Eldad, the extremely ideological former commander of Lehi, surprisingly quoted from Nietzsche: “If you want to follow me, be loyal to yourselves.”

Vladimir Jabotinsky, supreme commander of the Irgun in the 1930s, urged his followers to carry but “one flag” – that of Zionism. Yet he wrote that he himself refused to be branded or categorized but preferred to think freely as a Nietzschean “superman” would.

Conferences have been held in Jerusalem devoted to Nietzsche’s metaphysics, epistemology, science, and theory of this or of that. But arguably, Nietzsche’s greatest influence was his character.

Nietzsche’s most famous book is Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book in four parts, each of which was published separately between 1883 and 1885. One thousand copies of the first three were printed.More...

Police in Egypt on Wednesday arrested a man who tossed four homemade nail bombs into the German embassy grounds and attacked the entrance with a hammer but injured nobody and caused no serious damage, the embassy and security sources said.
The man acted out of anger after reading an Egyptian newspaper report on Friday which described a protest by German right-wing activists who had paraded caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in front of a German mosque, they said.
Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet to be offensive - a series of cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2005 on the same subject sparked protests across the Islamic world.
"It was just one person who attacked the embassy and damaged the glass of the entrance with a hammer," said a spokeswoman for the German embassy. "There was no major damage and no one hurt."
The man was also brandishing a toy pistol, she added, and had used a hammer to crack the entrance's toughened glass. He had brought copies of the offending newspaper article with him.More...

Interior Minister Eli Yishai wrote a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday asking her to intervene against any measures that might criminalize circumcision in her country.
Yishai’s letter follows a criminal complaint filed this week by a physician in Germany against Rabbi David Goldberg, a mohel based in Hof Saale, Bavaria, for performing brit mila.

The complainant, Dr. Sebastian Guevara Kamm from Giessen in the German state of Hesse, seemingly filed the complaint on the basis of a court ruling in Cologne, in North Rhine- Westphalia state, in June that non-medical circumcision is a “serious and irreversible interference in the integrity of the human body.”

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

The report also states that over 100,000 native Germans have converted to Islam in recent years.

German Intelligence Chief Gerhard Schindler has issued a warning saying that Europe is at great risk of terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists.
In a wide-ranging interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, Schindler said the German foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), is particularly concerned about the threat posed by homegrown terrorists, individuals who are either born or raised in Europe and who travel to war zones like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen to obtain training in terrorist methods.
Schindler said: "A particular threat stems from Al Qaeda structures in Yemen. They want to bring Jihad to Europe. Among other tactics, this involves the 'lone wolf' model, which involves individuals who are citizens of the targeted country and who go abroad for training. We know that this is strategy is currently high on Al Qaeda's agenda, and we are accordingly attentive."
Schindler's comments came just days after Spanish authorities arrested three suspected al Qaeda terrorists who were allegedly plotting an airborne attack on a shopping mall near Gibraltar, the British overseas territory on the southernmost tip of Spain.
Schindler's warning also comes amid the backdrop of a high-security court trial of four suspected Al Qaeda members which began in the German city of Düsseldorf on July 25. German public prosecutors say the defendants -- three home grown Islamists born in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and one Moroccan national -- were planning to stage a "sensational terror attack" in Germany.
Also known as the "Düsseldorfer Cell," the defendants are also accused of plotting to assassinate the former commander of German Special Forces (KSK Kommando Spezialkräfte) as well as to attack the US Army base in the Bavarian town of Grafenwöhr.
German authorities began monitoring the group in early 2010, when the American Central Intelligence Agency alerted German police to the fact that the Moroccan, Abdeladim el-Kebir, 31, had entered Germany after having been trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Waziristan along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2010.
German public prosecutors say El-Kebir, also known as Abi al-Barra, was the ringleader of the Düsseldorfer Cell and, following orders from an unidentified senior Al-Qaeda operative, in November 2010 began working on a plot to blow up public buildings, train stations and airports in Germany. After several months of surveillance by German police, El-Kebir was arrested in April 2011.
Before his arrest, El-Kebir also recruited three accomplices he knew from his student days in the German city of Bochum: a 32-year-old German-Moroccan named Jamil Seddiki, a 21-year-old German-Iranian named Amid Chaabi, and a 28-year-old German named citizen Halil Simsek. The three were arrested in Germany in December 2011.
Prosecutors say that Seddiki was in charge of producing explosives while Chaabi and Simsek were responsible for communications with the al Qaeda leadership.
During testimony in court, it emerged that all four defendants led inconspicuous lives. Simsek, for example, who was born in the German city of Gelsenkirchen, earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Bochum. He had wanted to become a German police officer but his application was rejected for medical reasons. Chaabi, who was born in Bochum, was studying Information Technology at the University of Hagen when he was arrested. Seddiki, a high school graduate, was working as an electrician.
Prosecutors have compiled 260 ring-binders containing evidence gathered by investigators; the prosecutor's arraignment runs to 500 pages. The main accusation against the men is that they set up a terrorist cell and prepared to commit murder.
Federal Prosecutor Michael Bruns told the court that the defendants "planned to carry out a spectacular and startling attack" in Germany and that the defendants "wanted to spread fear and horror."
The trial is expected to run for 30 days; a verdict is expected in November. If the four accused men are found guilty, they face up to ten years in prison.
(In November 2011, a federal court in Brooklyn, New York indicted el-Kebir on charges of conspiring to provide Al-Qaeda with explosives and training. If extradited and convicted, el-Kebir faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.)
Underscoring German officialdom's anxiety over home grown Islamic terrorism, the German state of Lower Saxony recently published a practical guide to extremist Islam to help citizens identify tell-tale signs of Muslims who are becoming radicalized.
Security officials said the objective of the document is to mitigate the threat of home-grown terrorist attacks by educating Germans about radical Islam and encouraging them to refer suspected Islamic extremists to the authorities -- a move that reflects mounting concern in Germany over the growing assertiveness of Salafist Muslims, who openly state that they want to establish Islamic Sharia law in the country and across Europe.
The 54-page document, "Radicalization Processes in the Context of Islamic Extremism and Terrorism," which provides countless details about the Islamist scene in Germany, paints a worrisome picture of the threat of radical Islam there.
According to the report, German security agencies estimate that approximately 1,140 individuals living in Germany pose a high risk of becoming Islamic terrorists. The document also states that up to 100,000 native Germans have converted to Islam in recent years, and that "intelligence analysis has found that converts are especially susceptible to radicalization…Security officials believe that converts comprise between five to ten percent of the Salafists."More...

A rabbi in Bavaria has been slapped with criminal charges of committing bodily harm, in the first known case to arise from an anti-circumcision ruling in May.
The charge against Rabbi David Goldberg, who is a mohel, or ritual circumciser , means that the May decision in the state of Hesse has been applied in Bavaria, confirming the fears of Jewish leaders here that the local ruling would have a wider impact.
Goldberg, 64, a Jerusalem native living in Hof Saale in Bavaria, told JTA he had not yet received a notice from the court. He said he would decide what to do after he had seen it. The charge was confirmed to the main Jewish newspaper of Germany, the Juedische Allgemeine Zeitung.
More...

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Israel’s embassy in Germany took an unusual step on Monday when it slammed the pro-Iran al- Qods march that took place on the weekend in downtown Berlin as a hate-filled pro-Iran propaganda event.
Traditionally, Israel’s Embassy proceeds with caution and uses temperate language when criticizing domestic German affairs.
Nevertheless, in a statement released on its website and on its micro-blog Twitter account, the Israeli embassy wrote that it “condemns the march of hate that took place on the streets of Berlin on August 18. It deals with a demonstration that was organized by the Ayatollah regime in Iran.”
The statement continued, “the heads of the regime at a parallel event in Tehran called for the destruction of the State of Israel and used anti-Semitic slogans. We regret that such demonstrations take place every year in Berlin.”
As many as 1,000 Hezbollah and pro-Iran supporters marched through the heart of downtown Berlin, calling for the end of Israel and urging resistance against the Jewish state. The widespread indifference of German society toward the the al-Qods march in Berlin prompted the columnist Gunnar Schupelius to write a biting column in the daily B.Z. ahead of the protest.
He blasted the authorities for permitting the anti- Israel event to take place.
The embassy’s decision to criticize the al-Qods protest suggests disappointment that Germany’s political class has not taken the Iranian threat seriously.
There were no German politicians present at the pro-Israel counter-demonstration on Saturday.
Iranian dissidents, pro- Israel leftist groups, and members of the Berlin Jewish community voiced support for a ban of the al- Qods protest and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
Dr Kazem Moussavi, a German-Iranian dissident and fierce critic of Iran’s regime, who spoke at the anti-al Qods protest, told The Jerusalem Post Saturday that Iran’s regime fears a transformation such as in Tunisia and Egypt.
He said Iran’s leaders have shifted their attention to al- Qods and propping up Syria’s Assad regime rather than deal with the destruction of an earthquake in northwest Iran.
The number of earthquake deaths topped 300 victims with over 3,000 injured.
Al-Qods demonstrations blanketed major European cities. In Vienna, YouTube videos showed supporters of Iran’s regime marching on Saturday, waving Hezbollah and Palestinian flags and calling for the destruction of Israel. Pro- Israel activists staged counter- events with an estimated 50 protestors slamming the violent anti-Semitism of Iran’s regime. More...

A former social democratic deputy in the Bundestag, Gert Weisskirchen, spoke at the “No Al-Qods Day” rally on Saturday in Berlin and called on the EU “to stand with Israel, without ifs and ands.”
Germany’s domestic intelligence noted in a new report that the number of Hezbollah members increased from 900 in 2010 to a current figure of 950 radical Islamists.
Pro-Israel groups and speakers called on the German government on Saturday at the anti-Al-Qods Day protest to ban Hezbollah in the Federal Republic because it promotes terrorism and modern anti-Semitism.
A police official at the demonstration in the heart of downtown Berlin told The Jerusalem Post that a total of 340 pro-Israel demonstrators were present. Jörg Fischer- Aharon, a spokesman for the No Al-Qods Day coalition, told the Post that 400 pro- Israel supporters appeared at the event.
Police officials and attendees from the pro-Israel groups told the Post that 600 Islamists marched at the pro- Iran and pro-Hezbollah event. According to observers, the Islamists attracted 200 additional supporters at this year’s event. A number of the Islamists aligned themselves with the Assad regime in Syria.
Dr. Clemens Heni, a leading German expert on Islamic anti-Semitism, told the Post that “two of the most dangerous Islamic groups “organized the Al-Qods Day march.
Heni cited the Muslim- Markt and the Islamic Center in Hamburg, which are both pro- Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He said it is a “scandal” that the authorities allowed the group to protest because they are aligned with Hezbollah.
“Every neo-Nazi demonstration that calls for the destruction of Israel would be banned,” he added, but the Islamists are permitted to agitate for the violent end of Israel.
Supporters of Hezbollah at the Al-Qods demonstration in Berlin sported yellow shirts with the group’s motto and a machine gun with the English word “Resistance.”More...

Those wishful-thinking diehards who believe Europe will eventually come to its senses regarding its security interests and reverse its suicidal tolerance of militant Islamists in its midst received a ringing slap in the face earlier this month.
The latest occurrence indicating the Old World is sliding into a bloody nightmare of Islamist violence with little desire to defend itself comes this time from Germany where news reports announced that bin Laden’s former bodyguard, who was discovered residing in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), has been busy recruiting young Muslims for the jihad. It is also believed the 36-year-old native of Tunisia, identified in newspapers in accordance with German law only as Sami A., is responsible for having radicalized two members of the Dusseldorf terrorist cell.
An al-Qaeda affiliate, the Dusseldorf cell was broken up in April of 2011. Three Islamist cell members are currently on trial, charged with planning a bomb attack in Germany.
“We have clear indications that he [Sami A.] tried to radicalise young people with his intellectual assets,” said Ralf Jaeger, the socialist interior minister for NRW.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the news publication, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), revealed last week that the former bin Laden employee and hardcore Salafist was actually planning to open his own mosque in Bochum, a city in NRW where he has lived the past eight years with his wife and three children. It was also WAZ investigators who revealed to the German public Sami A.’s presence in NRW and jihad recruitment activities.
The WAZ revelations, understandably, have sent shock waves across Germany. This is the country where some of the 9/11 suicide bombers lived and plotted their day of infamy against America. Due to this connection, many Germans are simply incredulous, as well as very embarrassed, that a bin Laden associate, who knew 9/11 plotters like Guantanamo prisoner Ramzi Binalshibh, was even in Germany let alone carrying on terrorist activities. WAZ states that Sami A. is “connected worldwide” to terrorist networks and also knew the terrorist who helped plan the synagogue attack on Tunisia’s Djerba island.
“In the terror scene, he is considered a bright light,” states WAZ. “Radical Islamists pay homage to him. For young people who seek direction, a person like Sami A. can be a fixture point.”
According to WAZ, Sami A. first came to Germany as a student in 1997. He travelled to Pakistan in 1999, remaining for seven months, staying also in an al-Qaeda guest house in Kandahar, where he met top al-Qaeda officials. In addition, Sami A. received 45 days of military training in an al-Qaeda camp. After returning to Germany, the al-Qaeda veteran resumed his studies, eventually moving to Bochum in 2005 to study electronics and take up jihadi activities. “The weapon,” WAZ reports, “with which he fights here (in Bochum) for the victory of radical Islam is his hero’s reputation.”
Not unexpectedly, the NRW branch of the German intelligence service responsible for keeping tabs on terrorists, the Verfassungsschutz (Germany’s FBI), is at pains to explain how a man who used to personally protect Osama bin Laden with a rocket propelled grenade launcher in Pakistan in 2000 could for years radicalise and recruit unimpeded young people for the jihad. All that a spokesman for the NRW Interior Ministry would say was that they had the dangerous Islamist in their sights since his move to Bochum.
What is perhaps even more embarrassing for the security agencies is that they apparently had no idea that Sami A. was intending to open his own mosque until a 61-year-old woman tipped them off. The former bin Laden bodyguard had set up a prayer house, also without officials knowing, in an empty building on a Bochumer street that he wanted to rebuild into a mosque, using a front man to do so. But the woman, who worked nights at a nearby residence for the mentally handicapped, informed police of, as one neighbor described them, “the Islamists who come out of the mosque sometime between midnight and two o’clock” and who were “unbearably loud.”
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Any reasonable person would assume it highly unlikely that Europe's leaders would have adopted the euro as their common currency if they had known 10 years ago what a mess they would be in today. The euro project, however, was not a project of reason but of political correctness. Ten years ago many economists warned that adopting a common currency for countries with such divergent economies as divergent as Germany and Spain (not to mention Finland and Greece) could not work. In spite of this, Europe's unelected political class pushed through the euro.
Today it is clear as well that the euro in its present form cannot survive without bankrupting all the economies of Europe. Yet the Europe Union's political class still persists in its vain and costly attempts to save the common European currency -- simply because giving up on the euro would mean admitting they were wrong from the start. What's more, the EU ideology that Europe is to develop into a genuine federal state does not allow its leaders to admit that Europe is a cluster of distinctly different nation states with different interests, cultures, languages and traditions.More...

German police are hunting the husband of Iraqi origin of a woman who was found with their two children, all three shot dead, at their home near Düsseldorf on Monday night.
Police were called to the flat in Neuss by a neighbour who said there was music playing inside, but no-one answered the door when she rang.
Officers who entered the flat found the bodies of a four-year-old boy, his eight-year-old sister and their 26-year-old mother. There was no trace of the father.
All three were probably shot, said public prosecutor Christoph Kumpa on Tuesday morning.
A murder investigation team was formed, and a spokesman said, “We are interested in the whereabouts of the husband.”
thelocal/AWE

On August 16, 2012, the City of Hamburg signed an agreement between Hamburg's center-left Mayor Olaf Scholz and it's Muslim Community granting Eid al-Adha (Islamic Festival of Sacrifice), Eid ul-Fitr (end of Ramadan festival), and the Day of Ashura ("Day
of Mourning") as officially recognized holidays.
Muslim workers will be allowed to take these days off, and their children will be allowed to stay out of school if they wish. The deal also promises Islamic communities more say in how religious lessons in school are formed.
Schura official Daniel Abdin described the agreement as "an important step towards the institutional recognition of Islam in Germany."
Muslim community groups, representing Hamburg's 120,000 Muslims, have agreed to recognize the "basic values of constitutional order" to reject "violence and discrimination based on origin, sexual orientation, and faith" and "religious and political viewpoints," and to recognize "equality between genders".
The latter agreements of Muslims are not even worth the paper it’s written on. It is today’s equivalent of Prophet Muhammad’s Hudaibiyah treaty signed in 628, which he threw away 2 years later.
The Muslim community never will or could fulfill those terms of agreement, because to do so would be a total rejection of the Quran, Allah, the Sunna of Muhammad and the Sharia Law. By if fulfilled those agreement, Hamburg Muslims will no longer remain Muslims. They will become apostates, who must be killed as per Sharia Law. This is because criticism or rejection of Islam, the shari'ah law or the Sunnah of the prophet Muhammad is regarded as apostasy in Islam, which is punishable by death. Let us now see why fulfilling those terms of agreements would amount to apostasy for Muslims.
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While the group is believed to operate all over the Continent, Germany is a center of activity, with 950 members and supporters last year, up from 900 in 2010, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said in its annual threat report. On Saturday, Hezbollah supporters and others will march here for the annual Jerusalem Day event, a protest against Israeli control of that city. Organizers told the Berlin police that the event would attract 1,000 marchers, and that two counterdemonstrations were also likely.More...

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Germany is helping Syrian rebels by providing them with information gathered by a German navy vessel off the coast of Syria, a newspaper said on Sunday, without citing sources.
Germany's Bild am Sonntag said the boat had spying equipment from the German intelligence service on board, enabling it to observe Syrian troop movements up to 600 km inland.More...

By Carl Savich
In 1981, The Last Act, Poslednji cin, a four part Yugoslav television mini-series was produced by Radiotelevizija Beograd (RTB). The TV series was a historical dramatization of the apprehension of Draza Mihailovich by OZNA agents in 1946. The series was featured on Yugoslav television by RTB and was rebroadcast by Radiotelevizija Srbije (RTS) in 2005, marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.
The series starred Milan Puzic as General Draza Mihailovich, Zoran Rankic as Nikola Kalabic, Dragan Nikolic as Major Ljuba Popovic, and Milan Bogunovic as Pukovnik Slobodan Penezic Krcun. Danilo Lazovic played Potpukovnik Lazic, Mirko Bulovic played Vasiljevic, an aide to Draza Mihailovich, Miodrag Krstovic was Dane, and Djordje Jovanovic was Majstorovic. The TV series also featured Rastislav Jovic as Kotarac, Tanasije Uzunovic as Japan, Mihajlo Viktorovic as Jovan Markovic, and Dusan Vojnovic as Milovan Jankovic. The series was directed by Sava Mrmak. Sinisa Pavic wrote the screenplay based on the book by Milovan Pejanovic entitled Velika igra sa Dražom Mihailovicem, The Great Game of Draza Mihailoich, under the pseudonym Ljuba Popovic, published in 1971 in Belgrade by Grafika Bgd. The original music for the series was composed by Vartkes Baronijan.More...